7 Miles Out

by Carol Morley

Description

In 1977, Carol Morley (fictionalized as "Ann") was 11 years old when her dad drove her to school one morning, then drove home and killed himself. Trapped in a house with her emotionally distant mother, Ann starts drinking at 12, drops out of school at 16, and spends her teens trying to explore her emerging sexuality as well as coming to terms with her father's death. In a Manchester of the hedonistic 1980s, Ann finds the perfect playground for her self-destruction and promiscuity, hiding show more behind heavy drinking and drugs, trying to come to terms with why her father wanted to end his life. Told mainly from Ann's (Carol's) perspective, this story reveals the often devastating consequences of family secrets, and follows a young woman's struggle to find a place she belongs, finally finding a place at Central St. Martins in London to study fine art and film and achieving international acclaim. Though names and some events have been changed, this is Carol's compelling and inspirational true story. show less

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timjones 280 reviews

I watched Carol Morley's first feature film "The Falling" earlier this year (she's also an acclimated documentarian), and enjoyed both the film and her writing about it enough to seek out "7 Miles Out", her (very) lightly fictionalised memoir of her childhood and teenage years growing up in Stockport, Lancashire in the wake of her father's suicide. Although this might make the book sound like a "misery memoir", it's often very funny, and quite apart from its own merits it shed a great deal of light on the principal characters in "The Falling". Enjoyed and recommended.

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